Freedom = $1.05
Banned
Thus ends my counter argument.
they're short one snake: hypnotized snake
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SPOILER: Metal Gear Solid V Spoiler Thread | Such a lust for conclusion, T-WHHOOOO
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they're short one snake: hypnotized snake
akidnamededdy
Banned
I don't even think it was accidental.
I'm imagining Kojima driving a big rig full of nanomachines, speeding towards a warehouse containing the MGS mythos.
"You want answers? I'VE GOT YOUR FUCKING ANSWERS!" *honnnk honnnnnnnnk*
Red Blaster
Member
nah, mgs4 subtracted gameplay in favor of idiotic nostalgia pandering and fanservice
It makes for good conversation, at least. I like reading everyone's opinions here. This thread is fascinating because we have so many people with so many different takes on the same game. Speaks to the complexity of this series (whether it's intended or not) and how we each connect with it in our own ways.
Actually, I had a similar experience with my own brother where we just decided not to take it so seriously. And yeah, it was a lot more fun at that point. But part of my brain was still reeling from what I was seeing, lol.Griss said:
Graphics Horse
Member
Solidus, enshrined forever as the guy who wore an eye patch for about 10 hours of his life.
That idea was enjoyable until MGSV, where you suddenly realise he's doing it all over again.
That idea was enjoyable until MGSV, where you suddenly realise he's doing it all over again.
Death Metalist
Member
I'm in the boat where I love all 5 but my favorite one is 4 because it felt cathartic to me after following the series and characters since 1998. It also really felt like the end because it conveyed the gravity of the situation pretty well I felt. However, 3 tells a more coherent story of the bunch as well as MGS1.
As for the dumb stuff, that's part of the charm that I like and every MGS has them. It's just a matter of who finds a certain thing dumber than another thing.
I like all the games. 4 is great. The only bad part was that the gameplay post Act 2 was severely lacking. Act 3 had great cutscenes, I loved 'em all.
I like 4 for the opposite reasons I like V and I like V for the opposite reasons I like 4:
4 had too much story, V had too little.
I like 4 for the opposite reasons I like V and I like V for the opposite reasons I like 4:
4 had too much story, V had too little.
Thus ends my counter argument.
Ah man, now Mount Snakemore feels incomplete.
Maybe Venom's on the back, doing his thousand-yard stare.
At least it's a step up from being ignored completely.
ShockingAlberto
Member
Thus ends my counter argument.
There were a lot of jokes, but that wasn't the backbone of the game at all. It had, pound for pound, more overwrought melodrama and Kojima-style "I am a dramatic genius" writing than any other Metal Gear.
That scene specifically was because he watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith and wanted to rip it off.
Thus ends my counter argument.
You know what I just realized is weird about this? Snake is enshrined as Old Snake but he only presumably looked so old recently within the events of MGS4 and Liquid presumably never saw him again after MGS2 until the Middle East in MGS4. How then could he know Snake was all old as shit rocking a mustache to then carve his face into Arsenal Gear?
inb4nanomachines.
It's funny, I've actually done thoughts experiments where I:
- Rearranged elements of MGS4 so there was more gameplay and less cutscenes
and
- Rearranged and added elements of MGSV so cutscenes came with more regularity
So yeah, I can understand that desire for a more balanced take in each.
While I vastly prefer the gameplay-centric approach of MGSV, I admit there were times I wish more missions began or ended with a cutscene.
Especially since the MGSV cutscenes were reasonable length. It wouldn't have felt too intrusive to have more of them.
Thus ends my counter argument.
Where's Mount Skullmore?
Graphics Horse
Member
You know, the former president of the united states who was two tentacles short of an octopus.
I always loved ocelot being all "Solidus, you look just like Big Boss now!' you know, save for the eye patch being on the wrong side. I like the idea that Ocelot just keeps those on his person, you know, if people need them or want to be crazy pirates.
Oh you mean that guy who did that thing
Underwater, a few miles behind, dredging up oil leaks left by Arsenal Gear
Well, as someone who thought the gameplay in MGS games ranged between mediocre and shit until 4 itself, that was not in any way an issue for me. I bought it for the story, after all, and what appeals to me with MGS stories is exactly stuff like idiotic nostalgia pandering and fanservice. The fact that we got a third of a game filled with great gameplay before it got taken away was about a third more than I was expecting, and the plot delivered in spades.
I know others disagree with that, and I know that 3 plays quite well if you bought the Subsistence or HD versions and get used to the controls, but by and large MGS was never about the gameplay for me. If it had been I would have checked out long ago. That's why GZ and TTP are such bizarre reversals in a lot of ways. So much that I loved about MGS is gone... replaced by truly exceptional gameplay that leaps to the very top of modern action / shooting / stealth gaming all at once. It's odd as hell.
As to the bolded, it wasn't cutscenes the missions were lacking, but important story beats themselves, whether dialogue or cutscene or whatever. In the good missions (GZ, Hellbound, Voices, Skull Face etc) something that matters to the story actually happens during a mission, or as a result of it. That should have applied to all missions rather than just a tiny handful.
Far too many missions were 'do X to continue picking up Skullface's trail'. Lots and lots of words and dialogue that moved the story nowhere, then the whole Skullface thing happens in 15 minutes all at once. It was really poorly paced.
PedroPanache
Member
The Boss scolds Ocelot like a child for showing off when he torments Sokolov outside the warehouse in MGS3.
Thus ends my counter argument.
This is one picture I want to always remember when thinking about Metal Gear. Just amazing. That being said, I can't tell which side is meant to be best to worst Snake.
Honestly, MGSV is almost there. Add a few extra cutscenes to the end and near the middle and pace them better between missions (I hate going back to MB and jumping on a cutscene, these should be paced with missions, not reliant on "random occurence") and I'd be happy.
I love 4,the only part i hate is the johnny/meryl wedding and maybe mt.snakemore.
Rex vs Ray was awesome as fuck.
The gameplay in MGS4 (what was there before the cutscenes took over) was definitely improved from earlier titles. MGO2 further proved MGS4 had good mechanics.
Then GZ and TPP come along, minimizing the story but making the improved gameplay of MGS4 even better.
Which like you say, is surprising. It's surprising to see Kojima completely reverse the emphasis from story to gameplay. Like, I didn't know he was physically capable of doing that.
I wonder if he really took the criticisms of MGS4 to heart and went in hard with the minimalism in MGSV.
I actually agree, for the most part. While I loved MGSV, including much of the story, something I didn't love were all of the nobody characters you had to extract. I mean, the act of extracting them was fun, but they were... well, nobody. Sometimes they said interesting stuff when slung over your shoulder (if you linger long enough to listen), but for the most part they were scowling mugshots that appear on the debriefing screen as Kaz paraphrases what they said. And what they said is inevitably filled with acronyms for different military organizations and other mumbo-jumbo.
Mother Base is where the lion's share of memorable plot moments take place. They should've saved more moments for out in the field, before or after missions.
You can't be serious. MGS4 is pure fanservice and silliness. It is obvious Kojima was just having the time of his life with this game.
Ever since finding Johnny in MGS2, I had WISHED for him to "do something important" and become a relevant character to the plot instead of being simply comic relief. MGS4 gave me EXACTLY what I wanted, so I loved that part of it.
PedroPanache
Member
I haven't gone back to MGS4 since the year it came out. I know I enjoyed it, despite the glaring flaws and the fact that the gameplay diminished after each passing act. I'm looking forward to replaying the series. For all MGSV's flaws, it's given me a strange impetus to blast through the series in chronological order. I'm going start with MGS3-PW-MG1-MG2-MGS-MGS2-MGS4. I've never played the 2 MG games, but after V, I really want to. It's actually MG2 I'm interested in, as I feel that's where Kojima starts his true imprint on the series.
I wonder if MGS4 will hold up when I eventually get round to it. I played the Uncharted 2 demo on PS4 this morning, and surprisingly, it left me a little cold. I know being dumped into the middle of a random chapter for 5 minutes doesn't really lend itself to an immediate impression, but there was no sense of nostalgia or fondness for the game. That won't stop me from buying the collection, of course, but still, I wonder if MGS4 will be the same.
The canon is completely borked at this point, so I'm less enamoured with the lore and more into the series for the outlandish ideas and camp spectacle. The weight of MGSV's story dampened my experience somewhat, but now that disappointment is out of the way, I'm just going to enjoy the gameplay and try out some of the game's more unusual weapons and items.
Well it's good to see we can get on the same page about something at least
I don't think the game would have been hurt at all by making half those missions 'post-game' content, as that would fit in with the theme of empty revenge and more wet-work to be done, only it's fairly meaningless now that SkullFace is gone and Zero comatose. The main story could have stood to be far, far shorter, and Chapter 2 is unfinished as it is. Rebalancing the two chapters would have helped, both in terms of pacing and thematically.
I did feel like they created these bases, these levels, and wanted to use each one at least once during the main story, even when there was no obvious story reason for it. That's what it felt like to me, anyway.
I did like this quote from one of those random targets, though... "He says that if he's working for you, it doesn't matter if he's number 2... or 200." because I immediately thought 'Damn if he thinks he's going to be number 200 on Mother Base with those shitty stats he's got another thing coming..'
Same,i must've played like a hundred times each game.
The crazy strategies i used to pull off in mgs3,amazing times.
MGS4 would've gelled with me much better if there was an even back and forth between gameplay and cutscenes. The five-act structure ended up feeling lopsided because some acts were cutscene-heavy and others had sufficient (or even generous) amounts of gameplay.
Way I remember ranking the chapters back then:
1) Act 2
2) Act 1
3) Act 4
4) Act 3
5) Act 5
Honestly, Acts 3 and 5 are interchangeable because each is just a trio of setpieces (sneak, boss, and bike in 3, and sneak, boss, and boss in 5).
Now MGSV has its own imbalance. Ch. 1 is weighted heavily in favor of gameplay, with 31 missions and a relative handful of cutscenes and tapes, while Ch. 2 is weighted heavily in favor of story, with hours' worth of cutscenes and tapes, but only six or seven all-new missions (more like eight or nine if you count certain "important side ops").
I was able to reconcile MGSV's structure in my head more easily because Ch. 1 is clearly like a standalone story and Ch. 2 was like an epilogue in the form of a short story collection. You have the quest for revenge, and then the emotional aftermath.
MGS4's structure felt much more stop and go to me -- now you're playing, now you're not -- which led to the lopsided feeling I described earlier.
This has been said thousands of times before.... No one "carved" anything on Outer Haven's hull. Mt. Snakemore is an Octocamo illusion. It disappears completely from the ship during the very same scene.
If only.
Medic was just living the american dream,literally.
Either nanomachines, or not explained.
Remember, Snake's suit is mostly makeshift using the original Octocamo blueprints, so I guess a gigantic ship like Outer Haven has a more advanced version of it.
Hmm. Pure speculation on my part, but maybe Arsenal Gear's camo is manipulating light to create the illusion of a 3D structure such as Mount Snakemore.
Just to be clear, though: Did they actually say Arsenal Gear was using octocamo to create the illusion? Or octocamo at all? (Honest question -- I'll take your word)
Red Blaster
Member
what about the prior games made you think the gameplay ranged from "mediocre to shit"? with the exception of mgs1 which is quite simple and is largely a 2D game in many ways, they're mechanically dense, reward player experimentation/ingenuity and feature incredible boss battles. mgs2 on the higher difficulties to this day features some of the best ai in a stealth game. their controls are obtuse and unwieldy but ive never been one who believes those are mutually exclusive with what constitutes strong gameplay.
i'd go even further to say that while mgs4 may have technically "advanced" the mechanics much of what was present was completely underused to the point where the improved gameplay didn't really even matter--especially compared to something like mgs3 where the game's overall theme of survival is imbued in almost every facet of the mechanics.
It is mentioned on MGS4's database.
MGS3's "Survival" aspects were half-assed and pretty boring, to be honest. I expected a ton more from the trailers.
Ah, I remember that app.
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